HOW TO QUICKLY GAIN VISIBILITY ONLINE BY ADDING YOUTUBE VIDEOS TO YOUR SITE
Maurits Knook, YouTube video Brandweer Nederweert, April 28, 2010 via Flickr, Creative Commons License
This article will explain how to use YouTube videos to help our websites gain visibility online.
When it comes to Internet marketing, there are hundreds of ways to generate traffic to our websites. It can quickly become an overwhelming task when we realize just how many options we have for generating traffic online.
Today we are going to explore perhaps one of the simplest and most effective methods of generating website traffic at little to no cost.
An important thing to note when beginning an online traffic generating strategy is this: it is more effective to focus on one or two traffic generation methods at a time. A common mistake a lot of people make is they try to implement many different traffic-generating strategies all at once; this dilutes both focus and effectiveness.
According to many experts it is much more productive to master one or two traffic generating strategies than trying to be good at all of them. Once we master a traffic generation strategy we will quickly find that we can generate qualified leads as well as a consistent number of visitors to our websites.
In this article we are going to learn how to use YouTube videos to generate a lot of qualified visitors to our websites.
Pay attention to the term “qualified visitors.” Another common mistake new Internet marketers make is that they value quantity of website visitors over the quality of those visitors. It is more important to have fewer qualified visitors than to have high numbers of unqualified website traffic.
YouTube videos automatically ensure that all the visitors to our websites will be highly qualified. Website traffic that comes from YouTube is highly qualified because the user has already shown enough interest to watch our videos and click on the link leading to our website. If the user did not enjoy our YouTube videos then they would have never visited our website in the first place. So YouTube videos are a great filter that ensure all our website visitors are interested prospects who have a higher possibility of turning into paying customers.
The next term we are going to introduce is: Conversion.
Conversion is the ratio of visitors that turn into paying customers. Traffic generation and conversion go hand in hand. It is not only critical to drive large amounts of traffic to a website, we must also make sure that a certain percentage of that website traffic converts into buyers. Always pay attention to your conversion numbers.
The basic rule for traffic and conversion is that we must never be spending more money on traffic generation than we are earning back from sales. When the cost of our website traffic exceeds our profits we must take a look at our conversion rates and improve our sales offer accordingly.
Lets take a few examples to demonstrate traffic and conversion more clearly:
1. Profitable Traffic & Conversion
Visitors per day: 200 (From free and paid sources)
Traffic cost per day: $30 (Advertising)
Sales per day: $100
Total Profit per day: $60
In this example we are profitable at $60 per day so our traffic and conversion strategy is working well. For $30 investment we are earning $60 in daily profit.
2. Poor Traffic & Conversion
Visitors per day: 400 (From free and paid sources)
Traffic cost per day: $30 (Advertising)
Sales per day: $10
Total Profit per day: -$20
In this example we have double the amount of traffic but our sales conversion is very low. Low conversions can be a result of many elements including:
- Having a poorly crafted sales offer
- Pricing too high or too low
- Offering the wrong product or service
- Unqualified traffic (Targeting the wrong demographics)
- Poor website design
- Slow website
- Not enough traffic
New websites require a lot of testing. In most cases a website will not be profitable right away. We will have to test different combinations of sales offers, products, website design, price points, demographics etc... before we reach the point where our site consistently converts visitors into buyers.
Now that we have a clear understanding of traffic and conversion we can explore how to use YouTube videos to help our business gain visibility online.
As mentioned before, YouTube videos naturally generate website traffic that is highly qualified and that converts fairly well.
There are two methods for getting people from our YouTube videos to our website. The first method is by simply placing our website URL in the description box below our video. The second way is to include our website address on the actual video itself.
How to create a link in the description area of a YouTube video:
When writing out our URL in the YouTube description box it is important to note two details:
- Write out the url beginning in: http://
- In order for this link to be ‘clickable’ it must be the first thing written in the description box
Example of the proper way to include a URL in the description box:
http://www.name.com Come visit our friendly website! We provide you with a simple solution for domain name registration, web hosting and website builder tools all in one place.
Example of the wrong way to include a URL in the description box:
Come visit our friendly website! We provide you with a simple solution for domain name registration, web hosting and website builder tools all in one place. http://www.name.com
The URL must be the first thing in the description and must begin with http://
Video Creation:
There are 2 ways of creating YouTube videos.
- We can feature ourselves or other spokespersons on the videos.
- We can create video slideshows using PowerPoint or other software programs.
Video Quality:
The sound and video quality is very important when it comes to creating YouTube videos; make sure you create videos that are both entertaining and helpful. The quality of your videos reflects your brand so make sure your videos communicate the right message.
How To Get Viewers From YouTube To Our Website:
Our main goal in creating YouTube videos is to move people from YouTube to our website; there are several ways to do this.
The main way to move viewer from YouTube to our website is by offering a free gift. A free gift can be anything including a Free eBook, Free Video Course, Free Consultation etc.
When a viewer watches our video and finds it helpful, they will be very inclined to visit our website to learn more information. When we offer them a free valuable gift, many of the viewers will go to our website and claim that gift.
This simple formula gets a lot of qualified people to visit your website; which eventually results in high sales conversions.
How To Get A Lot Of Views On Our YouTube Videos:
There are two main strategies for generating a lot of views to our YouTube videos; free or paid.
Let us talk about the paid option first.
YouTube offers us the option to advertise any video we like by using Adwords. YouTube video advertising is very affordable and simple; it is a great option for the new advertiser who is just getting started online.
When we advertise our videos on YouTube we pay per video view. This means that we only pay when someone actually watches our video. The average cost per view is only 0.13 cents, which is very affordable when compared with traditional Adwords advertising on Google.
The great thing about promoting our videos on YouTube is that our video is instantly displayed to thousands of qualified viewers; with the proper strategy we can be making a profit very quickly.
The second option is the free option. When creating free YouTube videos it is important to get creative. The more valuable, interesting and entertaining a video is, the more people will view it. YouTube watches the activity of every video; if they see that people are watching, liking and commenting on your video then it will start to spread that video out so more people can watch it.
So whether we choose to create free videos that will go viral or we choose to promote our videos through Adwords, we can ensure that our website will be receiving a lot of quality traffic that will translate into sales.